Sunday, November 15, 2009

L.o. 3a: Constructing a pose: Kaspar Tiptoe rough layout

Jojo was over the other night and so I showed him how to translate a storyboard pose into a layout pose.Here's the pose. Notice that it's a scribble. Not every line is meant t be taken literally. You have to maintain the pose and the guts and expression, but make a finished sensible constructed drawing, using logic (and appeal).

It's hard to put some of these things into words; it's better to demonstrate in person, but I'll try:

DRAW FORMS FIRST- my blue lines indicate the forms underneath the details. I started by doing the body pose in blue because that's the biggest part of the picture. I didn't start with the eye or the feet.

Forms are:

The body shape

the feet- made of more than one piece and bendableHands and fingers are 2 forms. Then group of finger form is divide up into individual finger forms.MuzzleCheek and Smile line make a form in between themThis smile and cheek line below is wrong; because they don't together make a shape. They aren't related like they should be.

Eye masketc.

many of the forms weave in and out of each other

each form is organic but solid - and you draw them all the way through - even under things that cross over them

Hairs, Detailsdo details last. Remember that the negative shapes between the hairs have to be above the body form. They can't cut holes through the form.LINES ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS FORMSLines are just borders around the forms. When drawing, look between the lines at the shapes they are bordering. Make the shapes appealing and sensible.

I love Kaspar's innocence here. One of my favorite things about your cartoons is how abrasive or jerky characters like Ren or George Liquor will have moments where they look more adorable than any other character!

John, thanks for continuing to explain this. Every example helps. This post helps me see what's wrong with my last try. You're teaching me a very different way of thinking about drawing than how I was approaching it, so I've been slow to catch on. Still not there, but feeling like I'm slowing getting it.

Since I have been following your posts, I occasionally practice construction of forms. Most drawings by me are done in two stages. Stage 1 is a scribble, stage 2 is a clean up drawn in ink. I now lean pretty much in the direction of construction. Is it impossible to draw in terms of "forms" without the construction steps? It sure seems so. Thanks John.

Part of the assignment is to make it "logical," but my personality tends to be analytical, so I worry that by being too logical I lose the cartooniness. It's always a judgment call, isn't it? Sometimes I think my judgment is way off.

I'm looking at those toes. In the scribble, you were exaggerating the one toenail poking through the sock, and the other toenail being the focus of Kaspar's delicate en pointe tiptoe. So it made sense to only see one toe on each foot. In your cleanup, it looks like the other toes are missing. Is that the intention?